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Monday, March 19, 2012

Co-operation

The Airbus Military complex in Seville, part of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), is a small city of some 2,000 workers where it is quite normal to hear three or four languages being spoken.

Among the giant planes being worked on is the A400M, the signature aircraft of the consortium's military division.

Even at a time of economic crisis, the division has a €503m (£418m) order book and profits at the close of 2011, before tax and costs, of over €1.1m.

This is a multinational European business – one whose own bosses and workers acknowledge would never have existed without European unity.

Now, it is competing for hegemony in the global aeronautics market.

Into the immense loading bay at the factory come the various components of the A400M, manufactured in the UK, Spain, Germany and France.

With these come teams of experts who fit the parts smoothly into the local template.

Their relationship is well established and specialised, though they don't spend all their time sharing the same physical space.

This collective effort, over 74 days, leads to the final stage of work on one of the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, with levels of precision-engineering and strength that are unthinkable in any other product.

And in the process, in ways that are possible only in a project of this kind, new avenues of investigation and technical development have opened up for exploration.

"The multinational European character of EADS is an advantage and an opportunity, one of its great strengths," says a proud Juan Silva, the engineer in charge of the final assembly line, who highlights the fact that in some phases more foreign than Spanish workers are involved in the process.

So convinced is he of the benefits of the exchange of ideas that he tries to make sure as many workers as possible spend time working in other European countries, so they can compare processes.

This was how they developed a sophisticated compressed-air system that allows an assembly-line robot to move weights of 38 tonnes almost with one hand.

José Ángel Rodríguez, in charge of Station 20, where the engines are installed, sets out the advantages of what he calls the Airbus philosophy, which is based on the constant exchange of information and experiences throughout the team, from operatives to bosses, and on cultivating personal relationships.

Dulce Muñoz, who works on his section, highlights the "enriching" nature of learning to look at things in new ways.

"It helps to break down myths," says her colleague, Ernesto Faluarte. "We've got the same problems they have in France or Germany, and we're just as good as they are."

The joint effort being made, and the existence of five prototypes already with 2,800 hours of flight time, has eliminated some prejudices and reinforced others.

The conviction lives on that the Germans are "the masters of method", thanks to their mathematical accomplishments in the field of process.

But it is also recognised that the Spanish have shown a very high level of technological ability – something question marks hung over at the start of the project.

The relationships between the different units of EADS in Europe is now so firmly established that they are able to monitor, in real time, from the centre of flight operations in Seville, more than 40,000 variables affecting a plane as it flies over the Pyrenees, and exchange more than 200,000 pieces of time-related data.

"One team, different streams," Francisco Jiménez says, as he monitors from his desk in Seville the hydraulic system of a plane flying over France.